Freight trains regularly rattle past the front door of Mereki Schmucker’s Forestville home. “It’s the screeching of the brakes on the freight trains that’s the worst, they’re going all through the night,” the 20-year-old says. “Sometimes the bed will shake. But you do adjust to it.”

Ms Schmucker, a university student, says a Colorbond fence put up along the line late last year to help shield the noise had made little difference.

Stirling residents Leonie and Richard Butcher, have reluctantly become used to loud freight trains which regularly whiz past their retirement village. “We knew the railway line was here when we moved four years ago, but we didn’t realised how bad it would be,” Mrs Butcher says.

It’s a similar story for Justin Burgess, who has campaigned for freight train noise reductions outside his Osborne home. “We were being woken up, the house rattled and it set my car alarm off.”